Leading Exponential Change (AGILE) - 1mproves

By Erich R. Bühler.

Brief summary of the book Leading Exponential Change by Erich R. Bühler. The author gives the keys to operate a transformational change in an organization, using mainly AGILE frameworks & mindsets.

You can find the full size MindMap here.

1- From zero to a million in 2 seconds

A- Moore law ≠ EXPONENTIAL law

Kodak predicted wrongly the digital usage of cameras. They planned the massive usage of the digital cameras based on the Moore law which was wrong. The usage of digital cameras followed the exponential law.

B- Change in the era of exponential acceleration

The exponential growth steps:

Digitalization
Deception
Disruption
Demonetization
Dematerialization
Democratization

C- Focusing on a healthy organization

People must feel confident
Less political decisions, more collaboration in teams and between them

Conflicts must be a tool for improvements

First 3 productive – last 2 are dysfunctional
Before activating change plan resolve conflict framework

D- Empirical learning

Improve thanks to empiricism
Replace the word requirements/features with hypothesis in order to be aware that it can be changed in the future.

SCRUM

Transparency
Inspection
Adaptation

Ask yourself : why are we doing this?

E- From the linear to an exponential mindset

Forget hold habits / mechanism to use old habits to avoid

F- Exponential company – COLLABORATION

Organizational structure that evolve by consensus
Clients co-creators
Encourage learning and decision by consensus
Use AI
Use different ways to measure progress
Reduce complexity and bureaucracy
Understand how the brain work faced with changes
Understand how to manage conflict

G- Organizational health change by 1 habit

Good meetings: divergence thinking, integration & convergence thinking.
Need a facilitator to facilitate meetings

2- Finding a suitable solution in a complex world

Healthy company : collaboration, initiative from people, shared goals, enjoy learning together…

A- Change is complex

Changes must come from a person they admire, not a superior.

Always good time to make a change
Believe in your idea
Share idea
Accept feedback
Passion for collectivity
Decisions from other can be changed

Managers want to have social proof that frameworks works first (which is a bad behavior).

B- Formula for an exponential organization

People don’t look only innovation but nostalgia, emotion, loyalty etc…

People pay less attention to quality if innovative and fulfill the purpose.
Have a minimum and acceptable product quality and customers cocreators.
The team must feel like the customer.

C- Complicated ≠ Complex

You can’t solve a communication problem (complex) with an IT tool (complicated):

Equation solvation: complicated
Nephews to watch: complex

Simple loop decision: exec get support, decision, communicate, implement, measures and reward (NOT GOOD).

Big plans = big changes = big impact (traditional thinking). Can have an opposite effect. And don’t always work: fewer defects -> decrease severity to low.

Minus change can have huge impact.

Bank fraud -> mail with different logo

Must change habits and mindset to make it last.

Linear thinking and steps don’t work well anymore. Better to use Iterative thinking (discover new lands like a sailer).

Be comfortable with ambiguity
Strong vision
Experimentation and measure
Be humble and realize you can fail
Move and gain momentum

3- Learning to change your company

Must have a Vision Of change ≠ corporate or product vision.

To implement a change you must first be corporate VISION.

A- Creating a powerful VISION OF CHANGE

Start with a draft:

Numbers
Stories/Anecdotes
Analogies
Emotions

Clarify the rights, obligations and expectations of each person.

Must be created collectively:

2 x 90min sessions with managers sponsors etc…
Introduce the problem in 2 min and place everyone in pairs.

2nd workshop: what would the story say about the changes the company is about to implement ? (10/15min)
Ask as much questions as possible
3rd workshop : How ? (Strategy)

Must be connected with company VISION.

Sense of URGENCY is important to accelerate the change plan.

B- Learning to change

Explicitly reference (in VISION) the expected form of reasoning and learning to be attained from the change.

C- Ask powerful question to build VISION

Determine sense of urgency
Try to understand what inspires people
- Ask what would inspire you to change ?
Verify expected goals
Check what should be modified
Determine what could be learned – once change done
Identify current opportunities – once change done
Determine product / personal risks are and required milestones
Establish high level roadmap

D- Setting the transformation team

3/5 peoples every 100 (must be part of day-to-day work, not externals).

Improving transparency & supporting the change
Demonstrating behaviors
Bringing to light dependencies
Help unlearn old practices
Creating necessary connections
Ensuring necessary alterations are made
… p.296

E- Importance of commitment in employees

Treat as potential customers.
Everyone should feel safe, learn everyday, and make collaborative decisions.
3 types of employees: committed, non committed and disconnected.

Make people feel motivated during transformation

Provide employees with the business context
Help understand the constraints
Use the real capacity
Connect people with the client and the purpose
Give time to discover and reflect
Gamify the matter
- Dynamics
- Mechanics
- Components
Create suitable metrics

F- Core values (Peter story)

Company vision and strategy
Clear distribution of power
Behaviours / social systems
Structures and their connections
Control systems

Down: more slow to transform.

Convergence ≠ Transformation
- Convergence: reinforce current values.

Re-creation: new values, new strategies… -> transformation
- Reduce complexity, improve communication…

G- Sustainable change in company

Start with a small team then expand.

4 approaches to transform:

Top-down
Local to global (bottom-up)
Little by little (organic)
Micro-habits

Top-down : employees can disagree
Bottom-up: pilot team should be highly motivated
Little by little: apply 1 principle at a time -> no urgency situation
Micro habits: change little habits -> can have big impacts
Habits (change in process)

4- Preparing your mind for the change

A- Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is the human tendency to seek and use information that confirms preexisting opinion.

To overcome ask “How” questions or inverted questions.

People must understand that they need to change and feel comfortable with it. So they change habits.

Accelerate change

Technical agility
Structural agility
Outcome agility
Social agility
Mental agility

When the change become exponential people become motivated and push for the change.
Change micro-habits.
LINEAR thinking doesn’t work with exponential changes!

B- Neuroplasticity

Thoughts and actions are controlled by your emotions.
During transformation, employees believe that the new plan put their role at risk:
- Your emotions make you decide before even analyzing the situation
Logic only come if emotion allow it
Your transformation strategy must have a clear purpose and be fun from the beginning
Involve all the team: what’re the personal challenges you see in this plan or initiative?
For every new activity prefrontal cortex (logic) has to make considerable efforts so you are more tired (amygdalae activates too)
- Once automated the activity is stored in the basal ganglia, consume little energy
Amygdalae: smoke detector
- Can take control of the brain and sabotage your plan if too much risks
- It activates before even the emotion become conscious
- Must be kept deactivated
  - Positive attitude decrease activation
  - Negative thoughts must be spoken explicitly
- Possibility of change in rank is one of the most aggressive threats
  - Disproportionate reaction of amygdalae
  - Giving unsolicited advice is the second most aggressive
    - Ask questions and make the person arrive to the conclusion by himself
    - Perfection game

C- Micro-habits

Implement big changes when motivation is high, micro-habits changes can be successful even when motivation low.
Increase motivation by involving the team in making decisions, use short cycles to measure, set small goals, let them choose their workloads, create a change vision… (p.149).
Many habits are a huge set of micro-habits (automatic ≠ reasoned decisions).
Identify the crucial moment that initiated the habit, be aware of benefits, change and reward (ex: red sign bank).
- Place, moment, emotional state, people involved, type of behavior, reward.

5- The 5 patterns to make change contagious

A- Motivated team

Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose

B- 5 areas to make change contagious

Conflict resolution

Runde and Flanagan resolution model
Triangle drama: victim, persecutor, rescuer
- Be careful to not be part of the triangle
- TED: the empowerment dynamic

Reframing mindset

Rebooting the mind with a different operating system.

Change lens to see things.

Robinson Crusoe technique p.179

Write 15 lines about the situation
Add BUT at the end of each phrase

Perceptual position technique p.181

Roles game

Exponential strategy

The Team must be reminded why changes are done.
The Team must know their rights, obligation, opportunities, roles: meeting to ask them opinions and expectations.
Communities of practice
Work on the following areas:
- Use real-time metrics
- Act as activists of a social movement
- Reaffirm why work is being done
- Use short work iterations: fast learning
- Use cloud technologies, AI, automation processes
Use technologies, change organizational structures, prepare people for constant change

Expectations and alignment

Everyone should be at the same page, know the priorities, align on business value…

Use a change backlog
VSM: value stream map – www.lucidchart.com

PROCESS ALIGNMENT:

Ensure you have a powerful vision and goals shared by the team
Why are we doing this?
Clear and share business value
The Team must verbalize expectations
Use SMART goals: specific, measurable, actions oriented, realistic, timely
Involve people who can positively influence success
Short work cycles, fast improvements

Psychological ownership

Control on the product can give the feeling of ownership
Knowing well the product can give the feeling of ownership
Invest time in product give a feeling of ownership
Rights and responsibilities
Changes self-initiated
Fairness, sense of community, active participation…

Ownership can be negative if we chose to left behind a product, important to learn how to get rid of a product for the team. The new product must be 2x more valuable. Create sessions to celebrate the change and compliment for the past.

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon: when you buy a mini you see it everywhere.

Before implementing the changes teach the patterns you think would have a positive impact, then they will start seeing them everywhere.

6- Preparing the transformation team

A- 3 stages for the change

Feasibility, purpose and context of the initiative
- Let’s go ahead, not move forward or more info or short experiment need to be run first
- Budget should be based on the results of short work iterations, not for the entire initiative.
  - Integrate customer in every step, transparency regarding obstacles and limitations
  - Don’t invest in a project but in a value stream
  - Clear process to refine the budget acknowledged by the team
  - Prioritize work or experiments collaboratively
  - Use budget to create better products
Liftoff of the initiative
Planning, estimation, prioritization and implementation

Short experiments and feedbacks (lean startup)

Transformation team must evaluate level of motivation, and suggest the appropriate strategies to use. Disappear once the change is done.

Hierarchy free, with different areas of expertise, passion, reframe, ability to work as a team, clear goals and comfortable working in pairs.

Measuring and evaluating scrum in complex environment: 3 documents downloaded .

Must be setup weeks before the start of the change plan
Executive leader must be part or express support
3 to 5 persons 100% available every 100 persons
External people, like coach, should focus on sharing knowledge with the team rather than taking charge of the change
Self organized
Use reciprocity

B- Once the transformation team is ready

Once The transformation team is ready, invite everyone including the team in a meeting to find and share the assumptions, scope of the change.

Impact mapping: why? Who? How? What? p.223 (Team LIFTOFF) can be done also for a team reset when motivation become low.

Chairs in circle in the middle of the room
Why are we doing this (change)?
Who will be affected to achieve the goal?
How should behaviors change?
What experiment or simple task could be performed to confirm whether that minimum impact is viable?

C- Interactions map

D- Use values and working agreements

Use values and working agreements: values that need to be shared and respected by the team p.228

Brainstorm meeting to define them
For each meeting you plan, make clear the outcomes, participants,…

E- Change Vision Roadmap

F- A5 canvas for each work cycle (3/5 days)

There must be a dedicated space: wall, window, tables…

G- Use Metrics

Business performance metrics (KPI)
Organizational health metrics
Habit-improvement indicators (driver metrics)

7- Discover the power within your company with enterprise social systems

Techniques should not be intrusive
Any individual in the organization must be able to use the new guidelines
Agile ≠ business agility

A- 4 layers of the organization

Social systems
- Relationship between people
- Most impacting
Mindset
- Beliefs and values
Formal organization
- Structure that sustain work styles
Value creation
- Frameworks
Include the 4 layers to have a powerful plan

B- The 5 components (help in challenge time)

1- Enterprise blocking collaboration

Negative impact – Signs of existence: p.267

Work agreements to reduce it. Between members team and different teams.

2- Enterprise social density

The more speed the information goes the better it is: informal faster than formal.
Encourage informal, relevant communication in a safe environment.
Make people work in pairs to share knowledge symmetric.
Direct form of communication.
Employees self-organized: no strong hierarchical structure.

CD3: cost of delay / duration prioritizing technique

GUIDELINES (p.275):

Everyone in the value stream must be able to clearly identify the process, activities and individual involved.
Face-to-face communication
Direct access to other employees who could help them
Bureaucracy actively simplified
Individuals teach each other using communities of practice
Safe to try new ways of working
Informal structures that maximize relevant conversations
People encouraged when the work to be done changes abruptly
People encouraged to work in pairs
Information provided by ai and big data available to everyone

3- Enterprise social visibility

Work in the same space, not remotely
Public information radiators: whiteboards, screens,…
- Everyone should see when updated
Visible social interaction: shake hands
Recognition of visible facial expressions
Visualisation of actions and movements for recognition and prediction
Connection between the value stream and the physical space
Organize meetings, events with fixed cadence

sococo.com

Offices layouts: p.289

4- Complexity and complication pattern

When something changes abruptly the brain tries to add steps, processes that give comfort
- Often counterproductive
Complexity ≠ complication
Things become more complicated, less capacity for innovation
Keep complication levels low
Starting a change initiative can complexifie more if already too much processes

DECREASING COMPLICATION:

Use face to face as much as possible
Try to not create new roles or departments, use cloud tools to simplify IT architecture
If few employees often break company standard do not add new rules, look for creative solutions
In any new plan managers should focus on removing obstacles instead of managing people
Product with low quality increase complication
Ensure people are not multitasking
Have frontlines employees in contact with the client more flexible and able to make small adjustments to the process
Build group consensus before meetings
Before implementing a new framework be sure the team has a low level of complication
People who work over 80% will increase level of complication
Let teams to be self organized
Have people in the company that are exclusively dedicated to removing obstacles
Ensure individuals feel safe
Do frequent reflection sessions to remove complication
Reduce knowledge silos in teams

5- Permission to learn pattern

Employees must be self organized, collaborative on what they want and how they want to learn
Everyone should share his knowledge
Workshop 100 people to form 8 scrum teams p.278
6 principles learning better
Eliminate bureaucracy
Communities of practice
The teams should manage his own budget for learning

BONUS: Entreprise social Systems game

Team of 6/7 people
Several problems on sticky in center table
Chose the most important
Find a plan to solve it
Then everyone take a role : expert density, expert visibility …
Review the problem and change the plan according to each expert

8- Enterprise social systems: ELSA and DeLTA frameworks

A- Leader qualities

Leads by example and inspires
Makes time for others
Generates empathy and is transparent with their thoughts
Maintains focus during difficult times
Inspires confidence with their actions, passion for their work
Identifies logical connections between proposals
Draws correct and well informed conclusions about necessary actions
Distinguish what complex and what complicated
Identifies relevant data and converts it into useful information
Recognizes unproven assumptions, beliefs and values and challenges them when necessary

B- ELSA Framework

ELSA Framework:

Requires a sponsor and leaders of the organization to support the initiative
Event, Language, Structures, Agency
Accelerate & Shortcuts

Priming

Game: Danemark, elephant
Importance of language
Present tense more powerful than future tense
Product requirement -> product hypothesis
Backlog colour, green, yellow second week, red two last days
Words about old people reduce speed in people who use them
Location and context important: study: hot and iced cup of coffee

So imagine the perfect day with your 5 senses (EVENT) for the change and feel it to use good LANGUAGE (analogies, stories…) and repeat the message often.

What if the perfect day … ?
Share via informal channels, encourage informal workspaces (STRUCTURES)
Employees must have explicit permission and the right to fail (AGENCY)
Associate employees with positive events

C- DELTA Framework

DELTA Framework is:

Double loop for transforming and accelerating
Contagious, no leader or sponsor needed
Contagious by habits

8 habits to change (WHAT not HOW). Small improvement on each and move to the next.

Alignement: people should ask more questions about problem (meetings)
Envisioning the ideal day (without the problem in question)
Shared understanding: employees provide feedbacks to others
Collective purpose: vision of change, working agreements…
Alignement II: create conditions for the ideal day, easily make change in the organization
Prototype: execute a plan without waiting for others
Validation: compare what meant to be achieved vs what is finally achieved
Reflection & improve on what can be done in general